About 74 million employees in the United States have access to a company-provided employee assistance program (EAP). In Minnesota, as many as 2.4 million employees have the benefit of an EAP. But very few use it.

The frustration that company leaders feel when offering a major benefit, particularly in the mental health space, that is so drastically underutilized bodes poorly for those who care about employee health and wellness.

Employee assistance programs came into being to help employees address personal and work-related problems. Assistance is available for a variety of issues, including substance abuse, stress, and family problems.

Minnesota state government can boast of a 50-year commitment to providing its employees with “offline” health assistance, codifying that offering in 1980. This public commitment has carried over to the private sector, with several Minnesota companies offering free or subsidized legal, financial, and mental health support for their employees.

How do employees learn about this benefit? Mostly, it seems, they are told during the onboarding process, a time of substantial information overload.

According to carebridge.com, another reason for employee non-use of EAPs is that workers don’t see an EAP platform as everyday support for wellness, but rather as a cry for help in a crisis moment—“jumping off the bridge” worries rather than “How can I help my eighth grader feel less anxious about gym class?” are radically different EAP requests, but both are part of mental health support.

Further exacerbating EAP non-use is the well-documented tendency for workers to avoid getting help for personal problems because “my private life is nobody else’s business.” Thirty years of endless workplace training to “professionalize” the workforce may have resulted in fewer reports of harassment and discrimination, but those traditional training modules emphasized respect and bias elimination toward one’s co-workers, not help for one’s own head.

While EAPs were supposed to alleviate the confidentiality concerns workers felt about going to HR, employees still don’t believe the boss won’t find out they are suffering.  Worries about being judged, harming promotion prospects, and facing retaliation consistently stop workers from accessing EAPs.

However, fearing the boss “might find out” is undergirded by an even greater fear. The stigma of asking for mental health help at work mirrors, unfortunately, society’s stigma toward mental health generally.

In a 2018 Workreach Solutions study of over 1,000 employed Canadians ages 20 to 65, respondents were measured under the Stigma Scale for Receiving Psychological Help, as well as an internal and validated Workreach scale to evaluate the stigma of using an EAP. Workreach is a consultancy for the EAP industry.

Statements respondents reacted to included “It is advisable for a person to hide from people that he/she has seen a psychologist” and “It is a sign of personal weakness to see a psychologist or therapist or psychiatrist.” Unsurprisingly, the more respondents seemed to disapprove of mental health treatment, the lower their EAP use was.

The Workreach Solutions study concluded that measures to reduce the stigma of mental health treatment can increase mental health literacy and challenge negative stereotypes.

One Minnesota company appears to have taken that finding to heart. Richfield-based Best Buy, which calls its EAP “Life Solutions,” offers eligible employees and everyone in their households up to eight free counseling sessions per year. The company also offers on-site and virtual counseling for “critical incidents” such as natural disasters and civil unrest.

With an apparent nod to the sandwich generation, which has to figure out care for their elderly parents while they’re also raising kids, Best Buy offers Wellthy, a personalized caregiving service. It helps employees with the logistical and administrative tasks they face caring for loved ones.

The most innovative attempt to establish a culture that normalizes seeking help, however, appears on the company’s corporate wellness page.

To reduce mental health stigma, Best Buy boldly intervened and posted the personal trauma stories of several consenting employees on its website. Some stories contained the first and last names of employees, who explained how they overcame their mental health struggles, used Best Buy resources, and returned to work. Not an insignificant step toward stigma-busting!